Aniket Behera

Co-founder & COO

Lukasz Kowalczyk

## What is Patient Scheduling and Why is it a Big Deal?
At the core of every healthcare system is one deceptively simple question: How do we make sure patients get the right care at the right time? One low-hanging fruit - patient scheduling - determines everything from clinical outcomes to hospital efficiency to financial performance. 

Scheduling is the thin line in healthcare between timely illness detection that could potentially save countless lives & US dollars vs missed healthcare opportunities that cost a fortune!

Yet still, it remains one of the most overlooked, inefficient, and fragmented processes in US Healthcare.

## Understanding the Complexity of Patient Scheduling

Patient scheduling plays a critical role across various healthcare settings, each with its own nuances and requirements.

In a **primary care setting**, scheduling involves routine check-ups, follow-up visits, and same-day sick appointments. The pertinent problem here is how do we minimize administrative burden on our front desk team that is busy juggling between reschedules, cancellations and triage patient needs in real time?
 

In **surgical centers**, it means seamless cross-team coordination, securing operating room availability fast, and accounting for procedure durations. Inside the labyrinthine workings of a giant hospital, a single scheduling dependency can set off a domino effect and disrupt the entire day’s workflow. 
 

Operating rooms require cohesive cross-communication between surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and recovery teams. Rigid scheduling models that don’t adapt quickly to the mercurial temperament of a hospital, can end up being ineffective and costly - a surgery could run longer than expected or a last-minute emergency case could pop up any minute. 
 

**Specialty clinics & referral scheduling** Referrals are where a lot of patients fall through the cracks. A primary care doctor flags something that needs a specialist’s - a cardiologist’s or a dermatologist or any other specialist’s- attention. But what next? Patients are expected to navigate scheduling on their own - call up offices, figure out availability, waiting weeks or months for an open slot. And the numbers back this up: GPs in the NHS make around 400,000 referrals a month, but many get sent back because outpatient clinics are already full.

From the specialist’s side, it’s just as chaotic.

They’re juggling long waitlists, urgent cases, and meandering busy schedules, while trying to ensure the patients requiring critical care, don’t get lost in the backlog. Multi-specialty clinics are sinking in this mess even more! Since every provider has different availabilities, procedure times, and rules. 
 

The result? 
The system fails patients. 
Who then lose hope in healthcare and resort to private clinics.
And clinics struggle to keep up with demand.
It’s a vicious cycle. 
 

In **telehealth**, a functioning scheduling system implies smooth virtual visits with patients receiving timely appointment reminders so that no one’s time is wasted! This sector is more prone to the appointments being skipped entirely, thus requiring additional checks and balances to maintain provider efficiency and patient access. 
 

**Diagnostic centers and outpatient clinics** must ensure that patients are properly prepared before their appointment. One mistake like not fasting before a test can lead to last-minute cancellations, wasted resources, and delayed patient care.

So here’s the deal: the difference between a well-run scheduling system and a broken one isn’t just administrative — it’s financial, operational, and clinical. And right now, most healthcare systems are on the losing side.

What happens with a well-functioning scheduling system in healthcare is that you reap threefold the benefits.

- **Firstly, Patients receive prompt care** without unnecessary delays.

- **Next, providers operate at full capacity** without gaps or overbooking.

- And finally, you have maximum efficiency, minimum **operational waste in the context** of exam rooms, equipment or admin staff. 

Now, let’s contrast that with how scheduling actually works today.

## The Cost of Poor Scheduling

Every open slot, last-minute cancellation, or missed referral translates into **wasted revenue and underutilized resources.** Besides the humongous financial ramifications that add up to 1 Trillion US dollars each year, perhaps the saddest blow that comes from inefficient scheduling in healthcare is the increasingly high number of cases of **delayed care and misdiagnoses** that could’ve easily been avoided. 
 

Here’s a glimpse into exactly how many dollars are wasted annually due to this fragmented process.

- **[$150 billion per year](https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/policy-value-based-care/article/13030987/missed-appointments-cost-the-us-healthcare-system-150b-annually)** in lost revenue due to no-shows.
- Each missed appointment resulting in **[$200 in lost revenue](https://www.phreesia.com/2021/06/01/the-hidden-cost-of-missed-appointments-how-no-shows-affect-your-practice/)**
- **Provider downtime** that results in **underutilized clinical hours.**
- **Patient leakage.** Nearly **30% of patients** have left a provider due to excessive wait times.
 

For healthcare providers, **fixing scheduling isn’t just about patient experience—it’s about operational survival.**

## How Can AI Solve Scheduling Challenges?

2025 has already been a year of constantly exclaiming *what can’t AI do*. In healthcare scheduling too, AI can help drastically bring down wasted resources and streamline healthcare operations. Going beyond simple automation, AI with predictive intelligence can make real-time scheduling adjustments, and deliver a personalized patient engagement. So how can AI help?


### AI Scheduling & Patient Self-Service

Instead of you as a patient listening to the hold music for hours, interact with an AI voice agent that would handle the end-to-end scheduling process in a jiffy with negligible hold times. This ensures non-native English speakers have access too. Manual booking barriers are removed and so patients can schedule, reschedule, or cancel appointments 24/7 through voice, text, or online platforms within seconds.

AI scheduling could also halve the vexatious administrative work on providers, so they can pay attention to patient care. That's an indispensable amount of time to give back to our healthcare providers!

Organizations that have adopted AI scheduling already report a **35–45% increase in patient satisfaction**!

### Ditch the Robocalls: Proactive Patient Engagement & Reduce No-Shows

Traditional reminder systems fail because they’re passive and react too late. But AI engagement with its proactivity and adaptability brings radical change in continued care and provider utilization.

Ditch the generic robocalls. Use AI reminders to engage patients proactively in real-time conversations, confirming attendance, rescheduling, and even assisting with transportation! Who would’ve thought that you can use AI can to sniff out high-risk no-show patients and tailor your communication accordingly. AI reminders at healthcare centres are already delivering a drop in no-show rates by 30-45%.

### Real-time Scheduling & Allocating resources

Appointment booked! What next? Need reminders? Sent! Did they cancel? Auto-backfill open slots, contact waitlisted patients, offer earlier appointments to those already scheduled. AI works round-the-clock optimizing scheduling.
 

Inside hospitals, AI predicts surgical case durations to reduce operating room (OR) downtime. In outpatient settings, AI optimizes diagnostic scheduling so your MRI and CT scan machines operate at full capacity, avoiding wasted resources from last-minute cancellations!
 

*On the first episode of 100ms.ai’s podcast with Aniket Behera and Gastroenterologist turned tech-entrepreneur Lukasz Kowalczyk, we delved into the depths of this and here’s an excerpt:*

Schedulers basically dial a lot of phone numbers, not knowing who they’re calling. They just know, ‘I have a referral in,’ but there’s no intelligence around it, no segmentation. So much time is wasted on cold calls and voicemails.

MD and CEO at Soothien HealthTech Advisory

Head here to listen to the whole conversation. 

### AI Referral Management & Patient Follow-Ups

Referral leakage, where up to 50% of referred patients never complete their specialist appointments, is currently a $500 million healthcare challenge! AI helps conquer by automating follow-ups, prioritizing high-risk cases, and assisting patients with scheduling specialist visits.


It can segment referrals into high and low-priority cases so that urgent patients get seen first. In a single interaction, the AI voice agent will explain referrals, answer patient queries, and book appointments - thus narrowing the referral leakage gap.


Your front office staff should be helping patients in-person, not spending six hours a day leaving voicemails. That's where AI can really make a difference. 

COO and Co-Founder at 100ms

### AI-Augmented Human Schedulers

AI isn’t replacing human schedulers, only 10x-ing their efficiency. Monitoring scheduling calls, suggesting real-time adjustments, and on-the-go coaching would also improve staff performance.

For example, if a scheduler is handling a high-risk patient, a simple AI-prompt for an earlier appointment can make a notable difference in timely care.

### Personalized AI Outreach & Demographic Adaptation

One-size-fits-all scheduling just doesn’t work in healthcare. The way you engage a 25-year-old for an appointment isn’t the same as how you engage a 75-year-old.

Like, the older demographic may not be as comfortable answering texts as they’d be receiving voice call reminders. If your admin team is sending out textual appointment/rescheduling prompts, the 60+ crowd may never respond back or be able to even navigate through the messages. Being able to analyse this is a bottleneck, and adjust on-the-go is a great asset and this is exactly what robust AI systems can do for you.

Language is another major barrier. AI-powered, multilingual outreach can detect a patient’s preferred language and communicate in Spanish, Mandarin, or Hindi. It can even sense hesitation and offer to connect them to a human agent if they seem unsure about scheduling.

This is what scheduling should have been doing all along. But now that AI is here, the healthcare staff can focus on everything important while AI delivers intelligent, patient-first engagement.

### AI Scheduling Resilience & Fail-Safes

Healthcare scheduling must be resilient, with built-in redundancies to prevent breakdowns. Advanced AI scheduling systems include multi-layered fail-safes, ensuring that patient outreach continues even if one method fails.

For example, if a patient doesn’t respond to an initial call, AI re-engages them through an alternate channel (text, email, or human agent escalation). Additionally, AI scheduling agents monitor real-time patient check-ins and dynamically adjust schedules to accommodate late arrivals or unexpected cancellations.

## What This Means for Healthcare Leaders? AI in Scheduling: A Cohesive Healthcare Experience

If you’re leading patient access, operations, or scheduling, here’s where the future is headed: 

-  Reduce No-Shows: AI reminders & follow-ups keep patients engaged and on time. 

-  Increase Revenue: Fewer empty slots mean higher appointment volume and revenue.

-  Relieve Staff Burnout: Your team focuses on patient care, not chasing voicemails.

-  Optimize Scheduling Efficiency: Use AI to book the right patients at the right times.

By merging AI with human experience, healthcare scheduling becomes proactive & dynamic - able to adapt patient needs and provider availability in real time. Healthcare providers adopting AI scheduling solutions will reduce administrative burdens, increase patient retention, and unlock new levels of operational efficiency, ushering in a new era of intelligent healthcare scheduling.

## 100ms.ai is revolutionizing healthcare scheduling and how

At 100ms.ai, we’re building AI-powered voice agents to tackle this head-on. Our solutions seamlessly integrate into existing healthcare systems, automate patient interactions, and optimize scheduling workflows to create a frictionless experience for both patients and providers.

Healthcare has seen success in adopting proven operational models from other industries—so why not scheduling? The same AI-driven automation that transformed retail, fintech, and hospitality is now ready for healthcare.

The reality is simple: manual scheduling is outdated, inefficient, and costly. The future is AI –- automated, and patient-centric. The only question is—will your healthcare system be an early adopter or risk falling behind?

AI is not plug-and-play yet. It takes fine-tuning to make sure it actually works for your specific patient population.

Catch all the insights about real-world AI scheduling results, best practices, and how AI is transforming patient access in the Episode 1 of our podcast with Aniket Behera and Doctor Lukasz Kowalczyk. 
 

🎧 Listen to the full episode **[here](https://www.100ms.ai/podcast/ai-agents-are-revolutionizing-healthcare-operations-100ms-ai-ai-rx-episode-1)**
 

If you’re ready to explore how AI scheduling can work for your organization, let’s talk. **[100ms.ai](https://www.100ms.ai/)** is already helping leading healthcare providers streamline scheduling and improve patient access. 

##### 
**[Book a Demo Today](https://www.100ms.ai/contact)**
#####

medium_100ms Ai Main Thumbnail.png

small_100ms Ai Main Thumbnail.png

thumbnail_100ms Ai Main Thumbnail.png

100ms Ai Main Thumbnail.png

Scheduling a Doctor’s Visit Now as Easy as Ordering an Uber

The intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare is transforming the way medical offices and healthcare organizations operate. In the first episode of **100ms.ai**'s podcast series, host **Aniket Behera**, co-founder of **100ms.ai**, sits down with **Dr. Lukasz Kowalczyk**, MD gastroenterologist (of 20+ years) and tech entrepreneur. They talk about how AI is enhancing healthcare operations, from patient scheduling to improving overall workflow efficiency.

This blog is a summary of that podcast, where we’ll be highlighting five key takeaways from Aniket and Lukasz's conversation - so you have insights that matter for healthcare finance leaders, strategy executives, and medical office decision-makers.


###  The Complexity of Healthcare Operations and AI’s Role

Healthcare operations are notoriously complex, with multiple stakeholders, regulatory requirements, and high-stakes patient interactions. **Aniket Behera points out that** every operational step—from scheduling to reminders—directly affects patient outcomes, making efficiency a critical factor.

Dr. Kowalczyk echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that AI has the potential to streamline these intricate workflows.

Administrative inefficiencies in healthcare are a major barrier to timely patient care. AI helps us break down these inefficiencies so doctors can focus on what matters—treating patients.

MD and CEO of Soothien HealthTech Advisory

AI-driven agents, like those developed by **[100ms.ai](https://www.100ms.ai/)**, can handle routine yet essential tasks, reducing the burden on human staff while improving the patient experience. For healthcare executives, this means increased efficiency, reduced administrative costs, and fewer scheduling bottlenecks—all of which lead to improved revenue cycles and patient satisfaction.


### AI and the Patient Scheduling Funnel

Dr. Kowalczyk MD compares patient scheduling to a **sales funnel**, where acquiring and retaining patients mirrors customer acquisition strategies in other industries. He describes how a patient’s journey starts with a referral moves through appointment scheduling, and ultimately leads to the procedure or consultation.

A key challenge in this process is that scheduling staff often have limited medical literacy, yet they play a crucial role in ensuring patients receive care on time. AI-powered voice agents can bridge this gap by intelligently guiding conversations, ensuring patients receive the right information without relying on staff who may lack specialized knowledge.


For hospital administrators and finance leaders, this automation reduces appointment no-shows, optimizes provider schedules, and enhances patient throughput —all of which contribute to better financial performance and operational stability.

The reality is, a lot of scheduling staff don’t have deep medical knowledge. AI can help structure those conversations so that patients get accurate and timely information without delays. 

### Personalization and Patient Trust ###

One of the biggest concerns with AI in healthcare is ensuring that patient interactions feel genuine and empathetic. Dr. Kowalczyk highlights that AI-driven voice agents can be designed to sound natural and build trust with patients.

He notes that regional accents and conversational tone can make AI-driven calls feel more authentic and personalized. For instance, older patients, who may initially be skeptical of AI, are often more receptive when the system mirrors the tone and mannerisms of human agents.

People assume AI interactions are robotic, but when done right, they can feel incredibly human—sometimes even better than a rushed phone call with an overworked staff member”

From a strategic standpoint, this level of personalization increases patient engagement, reduces friction in communication, and builds long-term trust in AI-powered healthcare solutions. Leaders in healthcare strategy must consider these human factors when integrating AI into patient-facing operations.

### Operational Excellence Meets Clinical Excellence

For AI to succeed in healthcare, it must seamlessly integrate with both clinical expertise and operational workflows. Dr. Kowalczyk explains that without proper alignment between administrative efficiency and medical decision-making, AI implementations can fall short of their potential.

He emphasizes that AI is most effective when it augments, rather than replaces, human decision-making. AI scheduling, for example, must be designed with input from clinicians to ensure medical priorities—such as urgent cases—are appropriately handled.

Healthcare executives should view AI as a collaborative tool rather than a standalone solution, ensuring that both operational and clinical teams are aligned in its implementation. This approach results in better patient outcomes, streamlined workflows, and enhanced financial performance. 

### The Future of AI in Healthcare: What’s Next?

As AI adoption grows, its role in healthcare operations will only expand. Aniket Behera notes that 


AI voice agents have already seen strong patient acceptance rates, and future developments will focus on enhancing predictive analytics, proactive patient engagement, and real-time operational decision-making

The next phase of AI in healthcare will involve more sophisticated automation, where systems not only assist with scheduling but also predict patient needs, optimize resource allocation, and provide actionable insights for healthcare leaders. 

For decision-makers in healthcare finance, operations, and strategy, this means now is the time to **invest in AI-driven solutions that can enhance both efficiency and patient care**. Organizations that proactively adopt and integrate AI will gain a competitive edge in an industry where **operational excellence is key to success**.

### **Conclusion: The Time to Act is Now**

AI is not just a futuristic concept—it’s already revolutionizing healthcare operations. From streamlining patient scheduling to improving engagement and workflow efficiency, AI-driven solutions are transforming the industry. 

For healthcare executives, the key takeaway is clear: AI isn’t here to replace human expertise—it’s here to amplify it. By strategically integrating AI into healthcare workflows, organizations can enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve patient experiences. 

This conversation between Aniket Behera and Dr. Lukasz Kowalczyk highlights the immense potential of AI in healthcare. Now, it’s up to industry leaders to embrace this transformation and take action. Head over here to listen to the whole podcast here. 

### What’s Next?

If your organization is exploring AI solutions, now is the time to start. Consider how AI voice agents and automation tools can streamline your operations and unlock new efficiencies in your healthcare practice.

Follow [*100ms.ai*](https://www.linkedin.com/company/68649749/) for continued insights into the intersection of AI and healthcare innovation. Or book time [here.](https://www.100ms.ai/) 